“How about the threat of death hanging over me?”
“I can take care of whoever’s threatening you, Helen. Take care of him once and for all.”
The sigh indicated that she was shifting toward telling him. He had kept his voice gentle, reasonable. “Whoever he is, Helen, he’s going to kill you one way or another. He has to. You’re the one person he fears. The one person who can tell the truth about him. Maybe he won’t kill you right away but he
She was silent a moment. He could see her eyes watching him, wondering about him. She’d want to know if he really would protect her, if he really could protect her. He didn’t blame her. A woman her age and all alone, she was especially vulnerable.
He would never know if she had made up her mind to confide in him or not. The rifle shots cracked in the darkness. Before he could push her to the ground and out of the path of the bullets, he saw her forehead split open like a chasm. She wobbled backward on her feet and then fell forward into Fargo’s arms. He grabbed her and held her as he flung them both to the ground, rolling, constantly rolling, as the continued shots tried to pick them off. The gunman was in a stand of jack pines.
“Dammit, Sam. You missed Fargo.”
Kenny and Sam Raines. The slimiest bastards in Cawthorne.
There was nothing he could do for Helen now so he eased his arms from her, sensing that her life force had already left her body. He wanted to be more reverent with her but there was no time. There were two men he was going to kill.
Amy Peters forced her way to the front of the crowd that had gathered outside the sheriff’s office. To her the sight was as lurid as the illustrations in cheap magazines. Around thirty drunken men, some of them holding torches, shouting for Tom Cain to let them have Ned Lenihan for a hanging. The stink of kerosene was on the air as the torch flames whipped in the wind. The faces of the men were cold and grotesque from their anger. Several of them held pint bottles of rotgut whiskey in their hands. A few waved pistols. Cain had drawn the curtains and had made no appearance. To Amy this meant he was expecting the worst and was hunkering down. She was afraid that he’d give in to them. He’d pretend that he didn’t have any choice but would secretly be happy to see them drag Ned out of his cell and push him down the street to where the old hanging tree sat behind the general store.
She shouted, “Listen to me! Listen to me!”
Her words made them only more belligerent. They shouted back, “Get out of here, Amy, unless you want to get hurt!” “You know he’s a killer but you just won’t admit it!” “He deserves to die and you’re not gonna stop us!”
One drunkard even rushed for her but a larger man grabbed him by the collar of his denim jacket and pulled him back.
Amy stood in a flat-brimmed black hat, a sheepskin, a red sweater and jeans. To show that she was serious, a Colt dangled from the fingers of her left hand. Only now were a few of them beginning to notice her gun. She decided to let the others know in a dramatic way. She angled the gun so that the bullet would pass safely over their heads. And then she fired.
They stopped shouting. Drunken ears rang with the sound of the gunshot. Drunken eyes narrowed, fixed on the pretty woman standing in front of the sheriff’s door.
“I want you to listen to this. Sheriff Cain himself asked Skye Fargo to look into the killings. Fargo found enough evidence to arrest Ned. But Fargo is the first to admit that most of the evidence seems shady. As if somebody had set Ned up. And if you don’t believe me you can ask Fargo.”
“Fargo don’t live here!” a man bellered, his Stetson painted a reddish-gold from the torch he held. “And he ain’t got no right to decide what happens in this town!”
The rumble went through the crowd again, animals making threatening noises to their perceived enemy, the woman who was defending the man they wanted to lynch.
“You men need to wait until you’re sober! You don’t want to do anything you’ll regret!”
“Who said we’ll regret it?” a man shouted.
And the crowd laughed.
Amy wanted to empty her gun into them. Stupid, drunken animals, all of them.
The door opened behind her. She turned to see Tom Cain, a sawed-off shotgun in one hand, step out onto the plank walk and stand next to her.
“We want you to let us have him, Cain!”
“And right now! Right damn now!”
“He’s the killer and you know it!”
Cain said, “Amy’s right. We don’t want any lynching here. This is a law-and-order town. And I mean to keep it that way.”
Amy was surprised by how confident and certain he sounded. There was a real threat in his voice. But then he turned to her and even before he spoke his face parted into a grin, his sneering grin, and he said, “Of course I can’t hold these boys off forever. They get ten more out here I’ll have to turn him over. I’m not going to sacrifice my men for the sake of Lenihan.”
He’d said it loudly enough for everybody to hear.
A boisterous cheer went up. They’d have their hanging soon enough.
15
The Raines boys were having trouble finding Fargo now. He’d rolled out of the direct line of fire, forcing Sam to shift positions in order to find him in the darkness. Sam kept reloading and firing. Fargo didn’t return fire. They were out of range of his Colt. He swung wide. His intent was to surprise them. They were so intent on killing him that they’d kept searching the shadows for him, staying in the same location the whole time.
Their horses were ground-tied on the downslope of the hill the Raines boys were using. He decided to use the horses as a way of luring the two out of their sanctuary.
He crept up to the animals, his Colt at the ready, tied the reins and looped them over the saddle horns. “Git,” he ordered, swatting both horses on their rumps. The horses whinnied and trotted off.
In the vast mountain silence, in the moonlight-limned gloom of the trees where the duo was hiding, a shout went up, “What the hell spooked our horses?”
By this time Fargo had edged up the hill and tucked himself inside the line of jack pines. They wouldn’t know where he was until it was too late. He got within range of them and let them start down the hill. When their backs were to him, he said, “Drop your rifle right now, Sam, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
He had to give them some time to realize that they’d walked into a trap. They froze in place. Fargo imagined they were considering their chances. There were two of them.
They could pitch their bodies in different directions and Fargo might have a hard time finding them with his gun. And maybe they’d get lucky. Maybe one or both of them could kill Fargo before he killed either one of them.
“What’re you gonna do to us?” Sam Raines said.
“Put your rifle down real slow, Sam. Set it on the ground. And then both of you empty your holsters the same way.”
Obviously Kenny hadn’t been able to manipulate a rifle with his left hand but that wouldn’t stop him from using a six-shooter.
“I didn’t mean to shoot that old woman. I was aiming for you, Fargo.”
“Shut up, Sam. You make me sick when you whine.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“Put the rifle down now. And the guns right after. Real slow.”
“You gonna kill us?” Sam Raines said.
“I’d like to but if you give yourselves up I’ll just take you in.”
“Now!” Kenny Raines shouted.
He was quicker and more agile than Fargo would have given him credit for. Kenny Raines dove to his left,
